It's an OS where the files have no association to programs; all configuration files and settings are stored "wherever" in text files that grow to be several megabytes long; most shell commands are so abstractly named that you would never be able to use them without knowing how they work.. or first reading its "manual pages".
It is also an OS of inconsistency. There's over a thousand distributions of Linux, and over a billion different modified versions of it. Programs come shipped as source code that you must compile and configure yourself (by way of large scripts that attempt to figure out how your system is running.. since nothing is standard).
What I am trying to say is if you want to make full use of your hardware, then use Windows. If you want to waste days trying to get an alpha OS to work with hacked drivers and illegally reverse engineered applications (that are mostly written by ugly teenagers who would stop doing it once they get laid) then by all means use Linux.
It's an OS where the files have association to only one program;
You can have alternate associations all configuration files and settings are stored in a "registry" that sits god-knows-where on the filesystem;
You don't have to use the registry if you don't want to. The registry is rather well documented, like most of the OS. The physical location of the registry is also well-documented(it's stored across different hives, global and user-specific hives). The location of the hives themselves is part hard-coded, and part self-referential, thus the registry refers to itself. (%SystemRoot%\system32\config\*, then look up HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\hivelist for a complete listing of all hives... it usually looks like:
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SAM -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\system32\config\SAM
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SECURITY -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\system32\config\SECURITY
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\system32\config\software
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SYSTEM -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\system32\config\system
\REGISTRY\USER\.DEFAULT -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\system32\config\default
\REGISTRY\USER\S-1-5-19 -> \Device\HarddiskVolume1\Documents and Settings\LocalService\NTUSER.DAT
And so on (per user registry follows).
While most people who have never studied how the registry works will find it confusing, it's actually rather nicely designed and easy to use, as long as you understand the basic principles behind it. It's also a lot more uniform than *nix's /etc, and allows more control to the user, as well as a lot more fine-grained control over permissions and hierarchy, however the structure of some of the data is rather complex and some developers tend to abuse it.
most commands are so retardedly named that you would never be able to use them without immediately having its full purpose shoved in your face.. or first reading its "tooltip".
Really? What commands may those be? I find Win32 API names a lot easier to remember than certain unix commands. They're also rather consistent. That doesn't mean I won't have to look up the documentation on either OS(MSDN on Windows, manpages on *nix).
It is also an OS of inconsistency. There's over a thousand wallpapers for Windows, and over a billion different pirated versions of it.
The APIs are very consistent. I have plenty of applications which while made in 2009-2010 are still compatible with Windows 9x and the NT line, even if those OSes have completly different kernels. That speaks a lot to how much care they took to preserve backward compatibility when they extended their APIs.
Just because there's different versions of the OS, that doesn't mean the core is different. Most differences are superficial and are in the included software and versions, as well as building parameters, not in functionality. Wouldn't this argument apply a lot more to there being uncountable numbers of GNU/Linux distros?
Programs come shipped as executable zip files or self-installing executables
I don't mind this packaging, however I tend to prefer archives to installers. When I'm dealing with an installer, I always unpack the installers files using some other tools beforehand to verify the contents and safety(using a disassembler/debugger in a VM) of the software.
or some other unsafe shit that you must authenticate for administrative access before running (by way of a large popup window that is so obtrusive that it stops you being able to do anything else until you've let it.. since no intelligence is assumed of the user).
You can easily disable this if you trust yourself more. It's more useful for those that are unable to verify the safety of some software before running it. It can also act as a reasonable heuristic. Besides, isn't this "problem" present on Ubuntu too, being asked your root password all the time.